DIY Silhouette Necklace

I'm so excited to be participating in Kelly's Mother's Day Handmade {love} Series!  I'm the third project out of ten coming your way!  Yesterday Jamie at Roubinek Reality shared a really sweet DIY Ruffled Kitchen Towel.  She has awesome and easy to follow instructions - go check her project out!!

So today I'm going to share a fun and easy Mother's day gift idea - a sweet little silhouette necklace.  I'm all about a silhouette - I love the vintage charm.  I wanted to come up with something that anyone could do and uses easy to find materials.  This really is easy, I promise!  Ok, let's get started!

Supplies I used:

- Balsa Wood Shapes

- Craft Paint

- Pencil

-Silhouette Stencil

- Sharpie Markers

- Small Nail (for making a hole to hang)

- Jump Rings

-Jewelry Chain

Jewelry Clasps

-Diamond Glaze or some other finish

The first thing you need to do is paint your Balsa wood shapes with craft paint - simple.  Balsa wood is a soft wood and its found in most craft stores.  I found the pre-cut shapes at Michaels.  I decided to use two circles and to add a little heart for an accent.  

  

After your paint is dry its time to trace your silhouette onto your pendant.  I simply found a profile of my son on my computer and shrank the size down to fit and printed it out.  Then, I cut out the silhouette to make a template and traced around the template with a pencil onto my pendant.  Next, I simply used a black sharpie to trace around the pencil.  *Here's a tip - a fine tip sharpie will work even better for outlining your silhouette.  After you have your outline use the regular tip sharpie for filling in.  I ended up filling in a couple of coats to get it dark and as even as possible.

Now you need to make your hole so you can use this as a pendant for your necklace.  You can either drill a hole or use a small nail and lightly tap it into the wood.  Its super soft wood so it doesn't take much to make a hole.  

After that, the next part is sealing and finishing it all off.  I decided to use diamond glaze- since I had it on hand and I like the glossy, hard finish it gives...Oh, also it dries super fast.  You could totally use a glossy modge podge or even a clear coat spray paint sealer - just use what you have.  

After your finish coat is all dry the last part is just assembling your necklace together.  I used a couple of jumprings to attach my pendants onto my chain.  Round nose pliers work great for opening and closing the jumprings.  Don't let this part intimidate you if you have never made jewelry - its so easy!  Jumprings can also be found at any craft store - even at Walmart.

And finally, you have a cute little silhouette necklace, ready for gift giving.  Mine came together pretty quickly.  I had a few minutes here and there to paint, cut, trace, gloss, etc.  Don't let handmade projects seem time consuming - usually I'm doing one little step at a time throughout the day when I work on a project like this instead of trying to carve out a chunk of time.  It works for me!

Thanks so much for joining me today!!  Tomorrow Jaime at Raising Up Rubies, will be sharing another great handmade mother's day gift idea so make sure to check it out, I can't wait!!  

Have a great day!

A Striped Silhouette

I have a fun project to share with you today!  So ever since I saw all of the adorable silhouette projects on pinterest I have been dying to make one of my own of my sweet little boy.  The thing is, I just haven't set the time aside to sit down and do it and instead, I've just been pinning and imagining a sweet little silhouette of Silas in my head.  Then, along comes the Pinterest Challenge and lights a fire under my behind.  So today I'm joining the ranks of great bloggers across the Nation who are taking on their pinning addiction and actually doing one of those really fun projects.  

Let me just tell you that this was one of those projects that I thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish and was super easy - and this is speaking from a person who is terrified of painting anything on a canvas with a tiny paintbrush.  I'm loving the finished product:

First, let me share my inspiration - here is my original Pin from the lovely Christina, aren't these adorable?

So, after checking out her lovely tutorial - I set off to decide what my silhouette would look like.  I decided to paint stripes on my canvas, mainly because I wanted to hang this up in my living room and it's in desperate need of some sort of color and pattern.

First thing was painting the stripes - now, I debated here on whether or not to paint the entire canvas white first and honestly- if I had to redo it I probably would.  But, since I tend to be impatient when working on any craft project I decided against it and went straight for the stripes.

I just used 1" painters tape and totally eyeballed the whole thing (because I'm impatient and didn't want to spend time measuring).

Once my stripes were taped on I used a little craft paint and painted over the canvas - I ended up painting two coats for better coverage.  

Then I got nervous because I was so convinced I would pull away the tape and reveal a giant mess.  But, to my surprise, it wasn't! And, actually looked pretty good.  It wasn't perfect - but the small imperfections are barely noticeable (especially when hanging up).  Next, I sighed a breath of relief knowing that I would not have to start over.

Ok, now for the silhouette part.  I needed a good profile picture of Silas to pull this off so I caught him at a good time when he was enthralled with Phineas and Ferb and took a quick shot of him before he realized what was going on - otherwise I would have never have gotten him to stand still for that long.  To enlarge it, I didn't use any fancy software I just uploaded it to my computer, pulled the picture into a page file and increased the size to fit a legal size document and printed it - simple.

Next I just cut out his profile, found the place I wanted it to go on my canvas and used a few pieces of painters tape to keep it still while I traced it.

And, then I had this:

This next part was the second scariest part for me because for some reason black paint makes me nervous plus I hate using a small paint brush, I'm just not skilled with it.  But, I just took in nice and slow around the traced line, using my paintbrush to outline the entire silhouette with my black paint.

These were the brushes I used, in case you were wondering.  I used the foam brush to fill in the larger area.

After a while my confidence in skinny paintbrush using was increasing and I was able to pull away with this - (this was my first coat and I did end up applying a second). whew.

And now he has a little spot in our living room to call home.

So cute right?

I love the stripes and the pop of color but the thing I love the most is my cute little Silas and this project just makes me smile every time I walk into this room.

Thanks so much for joining me today!  I'm joining up with the Pinterest Challenge and heading over to check out all of the other great projects that will be linked up!  Make sure you check out the awesome hosts projects: Sherry, Katie, Cassie & Erin.  

This project was so easy and fun and has totally inspired to get to working on more pinterest projects I have been procrastinating about.  So what about you?  Any pinterest projects looming in your pin boards that you are ready to tackle?  Have a great Wednesday!

Linking Up Here:

Thirty Handmade Days